Psychologist Philip Brownell first spotted his future wife Linda on an Internet dating site.

Her photo stood out because she was wearing a chicken hat.

Dating a woman with a chicken on her head could have been risky business, but Dr. Brownell went for it.

They have been married for a year-and-a-half.

Dr. Brownell is the president of the Gestalt Training Institute of Bermuda. He is a registered clinical psychologist, organisational consultant, and coach in private practice in Bermuda with Benedict Associates.

He is also the author of 'Gesalt Therapy: A Guide to Contemporary Practice'.

Dr. Brownell follows the gestalt theory of psychology which is an existential/experiential form of psychotherapy.

Existentialism is a modern philosophical movement that believes that people are entirely free and therefore responsible for what they make of themselves.

Experientialism believes that experience is the source of all knowledge.

Gestalt encourages its followers to take leaps of faith in their lives in order to grow and progress — which is what Dr. Brownell did with the Internet dating site.

"I considered reaching out to contact people online to be an experiment; you could say it was a gestalt experiment in that I told myself, 'Let's try this and see what happens'.

Dr. Brownell said gestalt is about looking at the significance of a life.

"It is about stepping out and trusting that the ground will be there to meet you," he said. "It is about making sure the situation has all the raw ingredients for the person to make their way in life."

Now the Brownells are offering courses in gestalt theory to other interested professionals and lay people.

"We have started a gestalt training institute," Dr. Brownell said. "It has three tracts to it. One is a clinical track where we want to provide training in gestalt therapy for people like school counsellors or anyone who wants continuing education."

This is a two-year module that ends with a certificate in gestalt therapy.

"The second track is this organisation development and coaching," said Dr. Brownell. "We have partnered with a group in the United Kingdom called the Academy of Executive Coaching to offer an intermediate and advanced programme in executive coaching.

"We are marketing for that and building the first classes."

This third track offers ad hoc workshops to meet community needs.

"Gestalt therapy theory helps me to understand the processes of life," said Dr. Brownell. "Many people study it as a discipline with no intention of becoming a therapist.

"They just like what it teaches a person, and they know they want to live like that.

"Often a person will get into therapy with a gestalt therapist, and then they will say, 'I want to learn more about this', so they enroll in a gestalt training programme."

For that reason the two-year certificate gestalt therapy training programme is for anyone who wants significant growth, not just people in psychological or counselling fields.

"In my training group in Portland, Oregon there were massage therapists, artists, and one conductor for the national philharmonic orchestra in his country," he said.

Dr. Brownell was first introduced to gestalt while working as a neuro psychiatric technician at the Oakland Naval Hospital in Oakland Hills, California during the Vietnam War.

"This was when one of the founders of gestalt therapy, Fritz Perls, was down at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California," he said. "He was down there teaching people gestalt therapy."

Some other professionals at the Oakland Naval Hospital such as social workers and psychologists were regularly travelling to Big Sur to receive gestalt training.

"I was assigned to work with a therapist in the gestalt group," said Dr. Brownell. "That is where I was exposed to it and it really seemed fascinating to me."

But before going for formal gestalt therapy training, his life took a different turn.

"I became a Christian," he said. "I was called to the ministry. I went to a seminary. I spent 13 years or so in full-time Christian ministry.

"Then I went back to school for my doctorate in clinical psychology. When I was in my doctoral programme they told all the students to pick a theoretical home base that would orient the way we practised. I picked gestalt."

For Dr. Brownell coming to Bermuda was a bit of a gestalt experiment in itself.

A few years ago, he was practising as a licensed psychologist in Oregon and North Carolina.

"While I was working in a very large group practice in Portland, Oregon, I saw an advertisement in the American psychological Association (APA) journal. Someone was trying to recruit a psychologist to come to Bermuda.

"I saw it one month and saw it the next month. I wondered why they were having a hard time getting someone to come to Bermuda."

His children were grown and he wasn't married at the time, so he went for it.

"Part of gestalt is experiential," he said. "You move to action. It is not just talking about things. You are moved to action in some way.

"An example might be if someone lost a loved one. I might say, imagine the loved one is over there. What would you want to tell them?

"Now imagine you are the loved one. Sit over there and be the loved one.

"That might help someone to sink up their experience, if they had unfinished business with the lost loved one.

"When you sit there and talk about things it is relatively safe but when you start enacting things that takes things to a different level."

He will be offering a workshop on topics such as co-dependency and sex addiction, communication, and communication in intimate relationships.

Workshops cost $50 a meeting and usually the topics run for four weeks.

For more information visit www.gtib.org.